1890s to 1900s MARY SCOTT ROWLAND BRASS ENGRAVED TUBE SIGNED LIPSTICK Antique Important to Note I can find no reference to her very scarce Lipstick with the Mary Scott Rowland Coat of Arms
American. New York, New York. Established in 1887 as a face massage business. She became one of America's first 'beauty experts' with syndicated newspaper columns appearing from 1897. Notable for filing one of America's first patents for a portable toilet powder box in 1896. She was a true cosmetics pioneer. Her company changed hands in 1907. Under Goodman Woolf's management the first Mary Scott Rowland compacts were marketed in the early 1930s. Last known compact was marketed in about 1946.
Mary Scott Rowland was the wife of the notorious bank robber, Robert Scott, of the Scott-Dunlap ring. After his imprisonment and death she went on to form a cosmetics company catering to the wealthy women of Manhattan, and in 1896 she patented an early form of a powder compact called the Toilet Box . This was the first Compact.
Mary Scott Rowland Logo Coat of Arms Logo containing the initials ‘MSR’ and topped with a crown.
Her History as told by the vintage compacts blog spot
Once in a blue moon a story to fantastic to be true
This is The Scott-Dunlap Ring it operated on the East Coast the gang targeted banks.
The Gangs two leaders, after whom the gang was named, were; Jim Dunlap and Robert Scott. Dunlap, also known as ‘The Gentleman Robber’, because of his ‘neat appearance, oily tongue and polished manners’, had drifted into crime in Chicago after the end of The Civil War an developed a reputation as an expert safecrackers Scott, a few years younger, was born and grew up on the banks of the Mississippi River, had also fought in The Civil War (having enlisted at the age of 13) and had spent some time in prison for theft and assault. How Dunlap and Scott teamed up is a mystery by 1872 they started what would prove to be, for both of them, very successful criminal careers – initially, at least. In 1872 they stole two hundred thousand dollars from the Falls City Bank in Louisville. KY, which was was a huge amount by any standard of the time. This stolen money allowed both men to live in luxury in New York but even though most of their time was spent gambling and living the high life Robert Scott also found time to get married.
Before he did, though, he and Jim Dunlap had started casing another bank, this time in Elmira NY where it was believed to have over two hundred thousand dollars in its safe. The planning for this robbery was detailed and prolonged and the gang needed a safe place to stay within easy access of the bank. One source refers to a woman (from Baltimore), who was a girlfriend of a gang member, renting a house in Elmira where the whole gang stayed for six weeks while preparing for the robbery. In the event, the plot was discovered and one of the gang was caught and imprisoned. But, during the extended stay in Elmira it seems more than likely that Robert Scott met a young lady named Mary B Wood.
Mary was a student at the famous Moravian Seminary in Bethlehem, PA but her family lived in Elmira and perhaps she met Scott during a school break. Whatever the exact circumstances of their meeting, she was obviously completely smitten by a man who would have lied about what he did for a living and who her family would have completely disapproved of unless, of course, he fooled them too - What eventuated was probably a quick courtship and a marriage that took place on 15 May 1873 when both were in their early 20s.
Following the wedding the newly weds moved to New York City and took up residence at the none too shabby No 3 North Washington Square in New York City. There, they evidently lived in a style that Scott had clearly grown accustomed to and one that Mary Scott would also have appreciated because she lived a privileged life of woman of means mixing with the social elite and taking singing lessons. But hers was a precarious life that depended on her husband's ability to keep stealing.
There is a suggestion that Jim Dunlap might also have lived at the same address as The Scotts and we can only speculate whether Mary Scott was aware of the true nature of her husband’s and his ‘partner’s’ profession.
By the summer of 1874 the money from earlier robberies was starting to run out and when, later that year, Dunlap and Scott and others had robbed a bank in Quincy, IL of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars and seven hundred thousand dollars in bonds.
Eventually, in January 1876, the gang hit the jackpot. The Northampton National Bank was robbed of $1.6 million in cash and bonds making it, by today’s standards, bigger than England’s Great Train Robbery and possibly the biggest robbery ever. The response from the bank was to do to the thieves what, twenty years later, would be done to Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. They called in The Pinkertons.
With a well deserved reputation for persistence and methodical investigation, The Pinkerton Agency eventually identified the likely robbers and on 11 February 1877, a year after the robbery, both Dunlap and Scott were arrested as they were boarding a train to Philadelphia to begin yet another ‘job’. They were found with various items that could be used to open safes and despite being elegantly dressed and wearing kid gloves and gold watches, Robert Scott had just seventeen cents in his pockets, although Dunlap ‘the gentleman robber, had a respectable $70.
Later reports from The Pinkertons suggest that they also suspected Mary Scott, if not for complicity in the gang’s thefts, but at least of having knowledge of where the stolen bonds were. The gang had tried, unsuccessfully, to strike a deal with the Northampton bank to buy back the bonds and, indeed, it transpired that Mary Scott knew exactly where they were hidden because she told another gang member in an attempt to raise money, by their illicit sale, for her husband’s (and Jim Dunlap’s) defence at the forthcoming trial.
In the event, Dunlap and Scott were found guilty and each sentenced to twenty years in prison in the State Penitentiary. No other gang member was charged (one turned State’s evidence and another revealed the location of the stolen bonds in return for immunity from prosecution) and nor was Mary Scott. It was just as well that she was seen to be only on the edge of her husband's criminal activity rather than actively involved.
Despite the fact that Mary Scott became a Widow when her husband died in prison.As a widow at the age of thirty-two and without the means to support herself she needed a job or a new husband or both. It is a matter of record that, six weeks after Robert Scott died in a Massachusetts prison his widow remarried on June 10 1882, in Chicago. Her new husband was John E Rowland, a riverboat captain.
the newly named Mary Scott Rowland also started on the next phase of her life, which would be equally notable, but for quite different reasons.
In 1887, having set up a residence at 123 Fifth Avenue, NYC with her husband, who was listed as a broker, she also set herself up in a business, in the same premises, as a ‘complexion restorer’. The essence of this business was facial massage using creams and lotions and the clientele she targeted were the wives of wealthy Manhattanites. The cost of Mary Scott Rowland treatments were high by any standard but she knew that women of a certain age, who also had money, would pay almost anything to preserve their youthful looks. An indication of the cost of a treatment was illustrated in a well-reported lawsuit taken out by Rowland in 1891 against a client who refused to pay her bill
The bill was $900 for a treatment of a daily massage over four weeks designed to remove superfluous flesh from the client’s neck (in other words, a double chin). The client was Arabella, wife of railroad millionaire, Collis Huntington, who believed she was ‘growing rather stout’ and in her own words she said “…and you know what that means to a woman.” Remember, this was 1891 and $900 is the equivalent of about $24,000 today! I should point out, though, that Arabella Huntington was believed, by many of the time, to be the richest woman in the world. Even so, Rowland’s bill was astronomical and eventually an out of court settlement was reached.
But the real result of the suit was exposure and publicity that money could not buy. A news article of the time, reporting on the lawsuit, included these words - “All this, of course, was magnificent advertising for the masseuse. It was all she needed to make her success in New York assured for her skill and business cleverness had already been established beyond the possibility of doubt. Every wealthy woman with a double chin who read or heard that Mrs Rowland could remove it, every wrinkled matron or spinster who learned that Mrs Rowland had the secret of smoothing telltale “crows’ feet” away, hastened to take the treatment… And those who went once kept on going.”
It seems to me that the Arabella incident illustrates a number of facets of Mary Scott Rowland’s personality. The first is her willingness to take advantage of wealthy women and their vanity. In the same way as her first husband and his associates took advantage of the weaknesses in banks – those repositories of wealth – for their own enrichment. These are amoral acts and perhaps Mary Scott Rowland was, at heart, amoral as well. Secondly Rowland, as an educated woman, saw the power of the written word to influence people’s attitudes. She had achieved a publicity coup with this lawsuit and was making progress with her written appeals to the authorities about pardoning Jim Dunlap. She would, as a result, become a regular contributor to newspaper columns and editorials. Lastly, I think Rowland wanted social status. She liked associating with the rich and famous and her business, so long as it was successful, also allowed her to continue living on Fifth Avenue and to travel. But, as a masseuse, she was still on the edge of the society she associated with.
The lawsuit as publicity proved to be a great marketing strategy for Mary Scott Rowland. So much so that in 1893 she mounted another suit, this time to recover just $250 (or $6,700 today) from a woman she had helped to ‘retain her beauty’. Press reports commented on how “Women…always used to marvel at the complexion of Mrs Mary White (the client)… She looked no more than 35 years old “(but she was at least twenty years older than that). The same press report made no secret of the fact that Mary Scott Rowland “…was once the wife of Scott, the notorious Northampton Bank Robber”. But, once again, Mary Scott Rowland probably saw this as publicity and was good for business.
A year before this, though, in December 1892 Mary Scott Rowland finally discharged her vow to her first husband. She secured the release of Jim Dunlap. Having petitioned such luminaries as General Sherman (Dunlap’s old Civil War commander) and the Massachusetts Governor, among others, Dunlap was eventually pardoned and released from Charleston prison. Mary Scott Rowland was there to meet him at the prison gates where she placed the cameo ring that Robert Scott had given to her on Dunlap’s finger - thereby symbolically discharging her promise. The New York Times reported “..Mrs Mary Scott Rowland and James Dunlap…were driven in a coach to 123 Fifth Avenue, where Mrs Rowland lives and has rooms in which she sells perfumes and those mysterious preparations used for the beautifying of ladies’ complexions’. The same report also provided one of the only descriptions of Mary I have found. “She is a plump little woman, below the average height, has blonde hair, large expressive eyes, and a good-natured and rather attractive face. She does not look or talk like a sentimental woman”.
I agree, I don’t think that she was a sentimental woman. To the contrary, some would argue that she was just a self-serving opportunist who was pushing the boundaries of acceptable social norms (because she encouraged women in their pursuit of beauty by artificial means and had previously been associated with a notorious bank robber). Either way, she was educated, had well-tuned communications skills and also a shrewd business sense. And it was this business sense that allowed her to capitalize on what was probably a chance meeting with someone who could really help her business.
This ‘someone’ was the world famous opera singer Adelina Patti who had first toured The United States in 1862. But this was thirty years later and Patti, at fifty, was probably more concerned with her looks than most women because she was still performing in public. There seems little doubt that she met Mary Scott Rowland in the latter’s professional capacity and the two women became friends. So much so, in fact, from about 1894 onwards Rowland was invited regularly to visit Patti at her palatial home in South Wales – Craig Y Nos. For Rowland, the friendship also allowed her to use the Patti name to promote Mary Scott Rowland products and this occurred from about 1897 when a product named Patti Rose Cream, marketed by Mary Scott Rowland, also made its appearance.
This patented invention was a generation ahead of it’s time. It shows that Mary Scott Rowland really understood what women were looking for in aportable container for powder and rouge. I do not think that any cases were made using this design.American women would have to wait another twenty years before anything like this was manufactured.
In the meantime, in July 1896, Mary Scott Rowland succeeded in having a patent registered for what she called a ‘Toilet Box’. it is a mark of the growing sophistication of her business as well as her inventive mind that such an invention was conceived. She knew what her customers wanted and what they needed and her patent was one of the first American inventions of what would eventually be called ‘compacts’. The patent contains the following words, “This invention…consists especially of a receptacle for powder, rouge, and the like, which is adapted to be carried in a lady’s pocket or muff, or to have a place on the toilet-table.” The box also comprised a powder container with a perforated, rotating, sifter as well as a mirror and a powder puff. The invention was years ahead of its time and I am not sure whether it ever made it into production but the fact that it was thought of at all was remarkable.
1897 was also the year that syndicated beauty advice columns, penned by Mary Scott Rowland, began appearing in major newspapers. Promoting herself as America’s first facial masseuse she also dispensed advice on a variety of beauty and health issues in the same way that Harriet Hubbard Ayer had been doing for The New York World since 1896. Some examples of Rowland columns can be seen from the following headlines; ‘Mary Scott Rowland Says That Women Should Never Wear Veils’, (March 1899), ‘Mary Scott Rowland Tells How a Good Color May be Cultivated’, (April 1899), ‘Mary Scott Rowland Gives Some Excellent Advice to Growing Girls’, (April 1899), ‘Mrs Rowland on Veils and Sallow Skin’, (June 1899).
At this point in the story I need to return to Jim Dunlap, briefly. Having convinced the authorities to pardon Dunlap in 1892 on the basis that he was of essentially good character and had been led astray by others, it may have been disappointing to hear of his arrest in Chicago in 1900 for the robbery of a bank in Wellington, IL. On the other hand, she was probably unsurprised because she knew him as well, if not better than most.
By the turn of the century the nature of her business was changing. Since it had begun, in 1887, it had been essentially a one-woman show with Mary Scott Rowland providing facial massages and selling various toilet preparations as ancillary items. But twenty-five years later, and in her early 50s, facial massaging must have looked like increasingly unattractive work. In addition, with the prices she was charging her wealthy clients and her low overheads she must have, by then, acquired the wealth she had once enjoyed as a newly married twenty year old – except that this wealth was more honestly earned (some may argue that this is not strictly true, though).In about 1907, having made annual visits to England for the past dozen years or so, it seems as if she decided to move there permanently and to establish an English branch of her business. In order to achieve this she probably sold the rights to her American business and the use of her name. The person who succeeded to the business was a man named Goodman Woolf – an ironically appropriate name for a business under new management, especially given the original owner’s less than good earlier associations.
And for compact collectors it was under Goodman Woolf’s management that the Mary Scott Rowland brand really entered the mainstream, as a cosmetics business – but a minor player, it must be said. Despite Mary Scott Rowland’s prescient patent for her toilet box, there is no record of a vanity box or compact case being branded with her name and, indeed, the first Mary Scott Rowland – branded case probably appeared no earlier than the mid 1920s. These early cases were branded with some sort of concocted Coat of Arms containing the initials ‘MSR’ and topped with a crown. This logo was used until the 1930s, it seems.
One question that I have not been able to answer to my own satisfaction is who made Mary Scott Rowland cosmetics? It is unlikely that Rowland herself made them when she operated from her Fifth Avenue premises because she had neither the trainingnor the facilities. Another company would probably have made those toilet preparations that she branded and sold as her own. Whether this practice continued under Goodman Woolf’s management is unclear. He certainly describes his occupation as a manufacturer of toilet preparations in the 1930 Federal Census so perhaps by that time the company did establish a manufacturing capability. But, if it did, it would have been on a relatively small scale.
With some minor exceptions, the public record is silent on the activities of Goodman Woolf and The Mary Scott Rowland brand in The United States. The existence of newspaper advertisements for Mary Scott Rowland products, being sold in various drug stores, does demonstrate that the business was still viable. So much so, in fact, that its value as a brand was recognised in the 1930s, when the ageing Goodman Woolf was unable to carry on. It is evident that Mary Scott Rowland cosmetics changed hands, but to whom is unknown. However, the new management continued to produce the Mary Scott Rowland brand (and a few compact cases were also marketed in this period) for the next thirty years with the last recorded reference I have found in 1962.
By the 1930s it is also clear that Mary Scott Rowland had left England and returned to stay, for good, in The United States. Her husband, John Rowland had died some years before, possibly as early as 1914, and while there is some evidence of Mary Scott Rowland products being advertised in England in 1914, both her products and the woman herself disappear from view for the next eighteen years.
In 1932 there is reference to her living in Patchogue, Long Island with two interesting snippets. First, she was entertaining, among others, a relative of her first husband, Robert Scott’s younger brother, Walter. Clearly contact between Mary Rowland and her first husband’s family had never been severed and it may be a coincidence but just two years earlier someone had applied to the US Government for a headstone to be placed on the unmarked grave of Robert Scott because, as a Civil War veteran, he was entitled to one. It’s interesting to speculate whether that someone was the eighty-year-old Mary Scott Rowland. Another snippet was that in 1932 Mary claimed that she had just made her 45th crossing of the Atlantic! Actually she continued to travel until at least 1936 and lived on until August 1946 to be buried in Patchogue as Mary S Rowland, wife of John E Rowland.
Her obituary, published in that well-known newspaper, The Patchogue Advance, got it all wrong. It was claimed that she was born in London (and in fact in her later life she did assert that this was so) and that she had been a resident of Blue Point and Patchogue for over 50 years. That was it. Nothing about the Scott-Dunlap Ring or the Northampton bank robbery. Nothing about Jim Dunlap and his pardon. Nothing about her mixing with the best of New York and London Society or of her business as a complexion queen. In fact nothing at all, really.
Mary Scott Rowland had, by any measure, lived in interesting times but it was often by association. She lived on the edge of infamy and of fame and because she lived on the edge she was forgotten and I suspect that even after her death, when the Mary Scott Rowland brand was still being sold, people were not aware that she existed. But her name lived on even if no one connected the real Mary Scott Rowland with the almost obscure cosmetics brand.
I hope that, in some small way, I have breathed life into someone who deserves more than the afterthought of an obituary she was given. Mary Scott Rowland lived a remarkable life and deserves to be remembered as a true pioneer of American cosmetics history. One day they may even make a movie about it!
Courtesy of the blog spot vintage compacts
Mary Scott Rowland's headstone is at Cedar Grove Cemetery, Patchogue NY